Mrs. Ducharme wiped away her tears, and looked at the doctor in hopes that he might suggest some plan by which she could accomplish her end. To him she was but another case of a badly working mechanism. Either from the blow on her head or from hereditary influences she had a predisposition to a fixed idea. That tendency had cultivated this aberration about the woman her husband preferred to her. Should she happen on this woman in her wanderings about Chicago, there would be one of those blind newspaper tragedies,--a trial, and a term of years in prison. As he meditated on this an idea seized the doctor; there was a way to distract her. "The best thing for you to do," he said severely, "is to go to work." "Can't get no place," she replied despondently. "Have no references and can't keep a place. See a feller going up the street that looks like Ducharme, and I must go after him." "I have a place in mind where you won't be likely to see many men that look like Ducharme!" He explained to her the situation of the Ninety-first Street cottage, and what Mrs. Preston needed. "You take this note there to-morrow morning, and tell her that you are willing to work for a home. Then I'll attend to the wages. If you do what I want,--keep that fellow well locked up and relieve Mrs. Preston of care,--I'll give you good wages. Not a word to her, mind, about that. And when you want to hunt Ducharme, just notify Mrs. Preston and go ahead. Only see that you hunt him in the daytime. Don't leave her alone nights. Now, let's see your eye." The woman took the brief note which he scribbled after examining her, and said dejectedly: "She won't want me long--no one does, least of all Ducharme." Sommers laughed. "Guess I better go straight down," she remarked more hopefully as she left. He should have taken the woman to the cottage, he reflected after she had gone, instead of sending her in this brusque manner. He had not seen Mrs. Preston since his return, and he did not know what had happened to her in the meantime. To-morrow he would find time to ride down there and see how things were going with the sick man.